as good as monsters inc was, i was dissapointed when i saw art from pre production on the movie that the film didn't follow them more closely. big dramatic change. you could see the change of hands from real artists to morons.

i think all your posts about color have saved my thesis film. so a big thank you in advanced!

I'm a cartoon artist John, and I love these background paintings and designs. When I was a kid, I used to think stuff like this, and Chuck Jone's stylings were mistakes, or done badly. Of course,this was when I was REALLY young. In my later pre-teen years though, I started to realize the beauty of this stuff.

I don't know how you'd use crayons on a computer-animated cartoon. You could try scribbling on your monitor, but I don't think that'll do any good.

CGI, of course, is a little bit trickier, because of all that high-end technology. You're paying a ton of money to create and perfect a new set of tools. At least, that's been the case for Pixar's early years. I don't know if you hit a ceiling or not, a certain point when you've invested in technology and software enough and just jump straight into the artwork.

Given the current glop of CGI pictures, I'd say that won't happen just yet. Too bad. It'd sure be nice to make an animation film without spending $100 or $150 million dollars.

That Monsters Inc poster is far too over saturated, although they didn't look THAT bad in the actual film. As for the Finding Nemo fish colours? Well, they were based directly on the real colours of the fish, which are rather bright a lot of the time to start with. There's a difference between the marketing art and the actual film, I think.

Silly, this is how you make a CGI animation with crayolons. First you melt them into the shape of DVD disc using a Playing Dough mold ($14.95). Then you play it in you home entertainment theater ($500,000). Sit back and relax as your very own home turns into a psychedelic disco of colors (acid tab $30).

Daniel Thomas Macinnes: New York animation studios and independent animators worldwide have used crayons to color their films for years. There was the award-winning holiday special "The Year Santa Got Aids", for example. Money need not be a requirement to achieve true genius.